Ebola vaccine to be rolled out by middle of 2015

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set out plans for speeding up development and deployment of experimental Ebola vaccines. 

It said hundreds of thousands of doses should be ready for use in west Africa by the middle of 2015.

The United Nations health agency confirmed that two leading vaccine candidates are in human clinical trials, and said another five experimental vaccines were also being developed and would begin clinical trials next year.

Marie-Paule Kieny from the WHO said: "Before the end of the first half of 2015 ... we could have available a few hundred thousand doses. That could be 200,000, it could be less or could be more."

Researchers are testing two candidate vaccines from GlaxoSmithKline and NewLink Genetics.

"At least five vaccines are following closely and will be in the clinic in the first months of 2015," Ms Kieny said.

Among those is a potential shot from Johnson & Johnson, which is set to enter human trials in January.

Mali yesterday became the sixth West African country to have a confirmed Ebola case in the worst outbreak on record of the haemorrhagic fever.

The epidemic has killed almost 4,900 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Experts will aim to conduct a range of different clinical trials in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to produce the first efficacy data by around April.

A number of entities including the World Bank and the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have made commitments to help fund the Ebola vaccine trials, distribution and deployment.

Drug manufacturers have also pledged to ensure any shots they do develop would be priced at an affordable level.

Elsewhere, US health officials have confirmed that American nurse Nina Pham, who had contracted Ebola, is now virus free. 

Ms Pham was the first person infected with Ebola in the US, having been diagnosed on 12 October.

She had been in isolation at a hospital in Texas before being transferred to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

Meanwhile, a doctor who recently returned to New York after treating Ebola patients in Guinea last night tested positive for the deadly virus, the first confirmed case in the city.

The 33-year-old, identified as Craig Spencer, has been placed in isolation, in what is the fourth case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States. The other three cases have all been in Texas.

The patient arrived back in America's largest city at JFK Airport on 17 October, travelling via Europe, after working with Ebola patients in west Africa with Médecins Sans Frontières.

New York City Mayor De Blasio said there was "no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed. Ebola is an extremely hard disease to contract. It is transmitted only through contact with an infected person's blood or other bodily fluids".

'Battle being lost in west Africa'

Trócaire Executive Director Éamonn Meehan has said he believes the battle "is still being lost" against Ebola in west Africa.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland from Sierra Leone, he said there are around 10,000 cases in the region, with 3,500 in Sierra Leone where there have been 1,500 deaths.

"Unfortunately the battle still is being lost here in west Africa," Mr Meehan said.

By December there could be a total of almost 3,000 cases a week in the country, if it is not brought under control, he said.

"If that were to happen, at that stage it would be, I think, impossible in this country to bring it under control," said Mr Meehan.

Sierra Leone suffers from extreme poverty with an inadequate health service, he said, where one in five children born in the country dies before their fifth birthday.

There is a big risk now from other diseases, such as malaria and dysentery, because people are not attending hospitals, fearing they may catch Ebola there, he said.

There is also a big problem with pregnant women not going to hospital, and hospitals not wanting to see maternity patients due to the crisis, he added.

He said more money is needed urgently, adding: "I would hope the Irish Government would be in a position to provide more resources as well into this battle."

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